Appeal No. 2002-0271
Application No. 09/467,406
In the first Office action (Paper No. 4, mailed December 11,
2000, paragraph 5), the examiner rejected claims 1 through 7, 9
through 11 and 20 through 24 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) based on
Hadjopoulos with the mere statement that "[t]he various lengths,
and angles claimed would appear to be obvious absent a showing of
criticality." In the final rejection (Paper No. 7, mailed March
13, 2001), the examiner repeated the rejection based on
Hadjopoulos, adding newly submitted claims 25 and 28 through 30
to the rejection, and indicating that "[t]he rational [sic] from
paragraph 5 of the last Office action is incorporated herein by
reference." In the examiner's answer (Paper No. 14, page 3), the
examiner has engaged in a somewhat different approach. More
particularly, the examiner now urges that:
Hadjopoulos shows a safety razor with leading and
trailing guard means and a plurality of intermediate
cutting edges. Each of the edges has a leading and
trailing edge and a slicing angle and a cutting angle.
It is noted that the average razor has a blade with a
length that is in the area of 35-45 mm. Thus the
length of the individual cutting edges of Hadjopoulos
would appear to be less than 8 mm in length. If not
however it would have been obvious to so stipulate
since changing their length by a small amount would
appear to have little bearing on the use of the razor.
Further it would appear likely that the shaving angle
of the blades would be slightly above zero as shown in
Figs. 1, 7 and would thus be either in or very close to
the claimed 2 deg.-90 deg. Range. If less than 2 deg.
then it would appear to be obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art that the angle would be increased to
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